Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman’s films are such distinct flavors, heavy on the quirk and human drama, that they’re immediately recognizable, even in animated form. If film is frequently thought of as a director’s medium, Kaufman proves that occasionally a screenwriter’s voice is so specific that it can puncture that thought ever so slightly.

Here in Anomalisa, Kaufman presents an authentic and great depiction of depression. Using stop-motion animation, Kaufman tells the story of a man’s (David Thewlis) midlife crisis in which he views everyone with the exact same nondescript face and the vocals of Tom Noonan, regardless of gender or age. Noonan’s vocals are frequently affectless and the same for every character, until he overhears Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the only person to feature their own face and vocals.

Make no mistake; this is no meet cute that’s a miracle cure-all. Unlike numerous movies with liter the landscape that sell the lie that romantic entanglements will cure crippling depression, Anomalisa proves that a connection can temporarily shake it off, but it’s still an uphill fight every moment of every day. Yet there’s a real tenderness and connection between these two lonely people, and their sex scene is the most emotional moment in a film full of them. Who knew a film about puppets would feature a sex scene that was that engaging and honest?

There’s not a lot of plot involved in Anomalisa, it mostly involves one night, is confined primarily to a hotel, and our emotions traverse from sympathetic feelings towards him to anger and wanting him to get his shit together. Then the final scene comes around, and we see how disconnected he is from his own life. An earlier scene hinted at it, the morning after with Leigh’s character, in which her voice merges with Noonan’s, and the sun behind her head slowly eclipses the character’s face. But the final scene hammers the point home, this guy is depressed, floundering, and needs a lot of help.

What makes the film work so well is its modesty of ambition. It is an entirely hermetically sealed world. Even the nightmare sequence takes place entirely within the hotel. This small scale allows for the focus to really narrow upon the character’s interactions, and how they evolve and change throughout the course of the night. Being a Kaufman film, things get weird and strange, but they never stop feeling real. Despite the puppet’s visible face plates and hair lines, despite it being yet another entry in a well-worn genre (middle-aged straight white man deals with sadness), it finds tremendous specificity, truth, and melancholy within. Never before has Cyndi Lauper’s “Girl Just Wanna Have Fun” been used to highlight the yearning to break free, to walk in the sun, to sing in our own voice.